you are the brightest i've seen (you are the best side of me)
by lecornergirl
Summary: Jess goes to California because it seems like the right thing to do. He's about to crawl out of his skin and he figures that when he does, he should make sure that the carnage is as far away from Rory as possible. Jess comes back because he knows what he wants, and maybe he's starting to believe he can have it. Rory/Jess, canon divergence. [cross-posted from AO3]


Jess goes to California because it seems like the right thing to do. He's about to crawl out of his skin and he figures that when he does, he should make sure that the carnage is as far away from Rory as possible. He's an asshole, sure, but not enough of one to leave her in the crossfire. So he gets on a bus, and then another one, and just keeps getting on buses until two days later he's in California.

He's never hated himself as much as he does when he watches Rory get off the bus in Hartford and doesn't say anything. He thinks he's doing the right thing, in some soullessly utilitarian sense of the word, but that doesn't erase the hurt written over every inch of her being, or the knowledge that he should have the power to fix it but he doesn't. He can't help her. He can't do anything.

Jess doesn't really have a plan for California. All he knows is that he needs some distance from the mess he's made in Stars Hollow these past two years. He finds his dad, and his dad's girlfriend, and her daughter, and their life seems so normal, so _domestic_ that it makes him itch, somewhere deep inside he can't quite reach to scratch at.

He tries to yell at Jimmy, about his childhood and the visit to Stars Hollow and everything in between, but every shouted accusation leaves him feeling emptier than before.

No matter how much he tries to shut it off, he sees Rory everywhere he goes. A flash of hair disappearing around the corner, the colour of her eyes when the sun hits the ocean, an overheard snatch of conversation about the various potential merits of Vonnegut. She's there every time he closes his eyes, when he can't just tell himself he's imagining it. Because of course he's imagining it, but that's the point, isn't it? He can't _stop_ imagining it.

* * *

In the end, he finds what he's looking for at the beach, and it's just all so clichéd that he'd be tempted not to take it if he didn't want it so goddamn badly.

Jess doesn't go to the beach looking for answers. He goes because he finds the irony amusing: his leather jacket in the early summer heat, his beat-up copy of Hemingway in the sea of glossy magazines. It's a little bit self-indulgent and more than a little pretentious, but his entire life is a balancing act on the line between pretentious and just the right level of aloof required to stay afloat.

He's been there for maybe an hour when an old man sits next to him on the low stone wall. It doesn't even occur to Jess that he might have sat there for a reason, until the man asks him a question.

"So, kid, what are you running from?"

Jess doesn't answer. Whoever this man is, it's no business of his.

"Hey, no sweat," the man says after another minute. "It's your business. But I know some kids just like you, and you look like you could use someone to talk to."

Jess opens his mouth, fully intending to tell the old man to go shrink someone else's head, but that's not what ends up coming out. What ends up coming out is the whole story, every last wretched detail of it. How he's not graduating high school, how he fought with Luke, how he left Rory behind without saying a word because he couldn't stand to see the disappointment in her eyes if he told her.

The man listens, looking for all the world like a sympathetic grandfather. He lets Jess get it all out, thinks for a moment, then says, not unkindly, "kid, I'm going to be honest with you here, I think you need to get over yourself."

Jess has only known this man for fifteen minutes, but it stings all the same. "I—"

The man isn't done yet. "Look, I know what it's like to think you have to do everything alone, but you've got people, sounds like. Get over yourself and let them help you."

Jess's face grows hot, because here's this stranger, someone who'd never met him before today, and somehow he's pierced right through to the crux of it. "It's too late," he mutters, staring at his shoes. "I left. They won't want me back."

"Part of trusting people is letting yourself be vulnerable," the man says.

Jess snorts. "What are you, California Yoda?"

"I was like you, once," the man says, "and someone helped me out. I'm just paying it forward." He stands up. "I can only give you advice," he says. "It's up to you to do what you will with it." He walks away, blending into the crowd so quickly Jess could almost think the whole encounter was a figment of his imagination.

Almost, except for the embarrassment still flush on his cheeks and the new determination growing in his chest. He knows what he needs to do, and it's made all the easier by the fact that going back to Stars Hollow is, against all odds, what he's wanted more than anything in the world since the moment he left.

He just hadn't thought he could.

* * *

Jess spends the whole bus ride back trying to think of what he can possibly say to make any of it right, but when he gets to Luke's late at night he's s still empty-handed, no strings of pretty words stored in his back pocket to whip out at a moment's notice. Every bone in his body is aching to go straight to Rory, to climb in through her window and refuse to leave until she forgives him, but Luke is the most family he's known in his life, and that means something.

Luke is closing the diner, wiping down tables and putting up chairs, but he looks up when Jess opens the door. For a moment, they just stare at each other, wary like animals encountering a new species in the wild.

Then Jess starts to speak, and though he has nothing prepared, the words come easily anyway. "Luke, I'm sorry. I'm such an ass. You did so much for me, and I was terrible."

"You were," Luke says, but his face is open and welcoming and full of love, and it was only days ago but Jess can't imagine ever thinking that Luke wasn't there for him, or didn't want to help him. Jess has just been standing in his own way this whole time.

He starts trying to explain this to Luke, but his uncle holds up a hand to stop him. "We can talk about it more in the morning. As long as you don't take off again."

"I won't," Jess says, and thinks that he's never meant anything more.

Luke smiles, then frowns, like something is occurring to him. "Does Rory know you're back?"

Jess looks down. "Not yet. I wanted to see you first. Figured I owed you that much."

For a moment, neither of them speaks. It's Luke who breaks the silence first. "If you go back to her now, you better really mean it."

Jess nods. "I know. I do."

Luke sighs. "I know you do, kid."

* * *

Jess never gets as far as climbing through Rory's window, because she happens to glance up at just the right moment and sees him coming. By the time he gets to the house she's on the porch, wearing a flannel robe and a furious expression.

"I graduated yesterday, you know," she says, and the quiet anger in her voice is one of the worst things he's ever heard. "I guess in the back of my mind I'd thought maybe you'd show up for it. For me. But you didn't."

Jess bites his tongue before he can say that he's here now, because that's not what she means and they both know it. "I'm sorry," he says instead, the best place he can think to start at. "I fucked up, and then instead of trying to fix it, I just fucked up again and again. It's like—like I could see myself digging this hole and falling into it but I just couldn't stop digging."

"Luke told me about school," Rory offers, softly now. "I wish you'd told me."

"I couldn't," he says. "I couldn't stand the thought of you being disappointed in me. I mean, look at you. Valedictorian, student body vice president, headed to Yale. And I couldn't even get through high school."

Rory takes his hand, sits down on the porch steps and pulls him down with her. She doesn't let go. "Jess, you know you can. If you try."

"It's too late now," he says, clinging to her hand like a lifeline. "And that's not even all of it. You were so good to me, and I… wasn't."

"No, you weren't," Rory says, and Jess wishes people would stop agreeing with him when he says he's terrible, but then again, they're right.

"What's really ironic," Jess continues, more for his own benefit than anyone else's, "is that I did all of that because I love you, and that scares the shit out of me. And look where it got me. In California, getting advice from swimsuit Yoda."

Rory looks mystified. "Okay, we're going to circle back that, but, Jess. This is why you should have talked to me. I love you too, and it's terrifying. I thought I loved Dean, but compared to you? That was nothing. A droplet in an ocean. But I can't do this if you don't let me in. And I definitely can't do it if you keep leaving."

"I know," Jess says, so quietly it's almost a whisper. "I'm trying."

"That's all I'm asking," Rory says.

She turns her head to kiss him, and it's like pure oxygen pouring from her lips to his, like he can breathe properly for the first time since getting on that first bus to Hartford.

* * *

The next day, Rory goes with Jess when he signs up for summer school. The principal doesn't seem too eager to take him, but he's always had a soft spot for Rory, and she talks him into it.

At the end of the summer, Rory packs up and moves to Yale. But first she watches her boyfriend get his high school diploma, and ducks under the mortarboard to kiss him congratulations.


End file.
